Who the hell is Gad Elmaleh?!

OK, French comedian Gad Elmaleh has been playing in the US for a few years now, appeared in a couple of movies that were released here (Priceless, Midnight in Paris…), and did his first English-speaking one man show in New York City a bit more than a month ago, so quite a few Francophiles now know who he is, but I couldn’t resist reminding y’all the SXSW “Who the hell is Stromae?!” poster (that the Belgian singer used when he already was quite famous in the US…)!

Anyway! If you don’t know who the hell is Gad Elmaleh, Wikipedia will tell you he’s “a Moroccan-French stand-up comedian and actor who lives and works in France.” I guess the page should be updated to reflect the fact that he’s today in Austin kicking a US tour of his Gad Elmaleh All in English show launched in NYC at the end of September, and currently mostly works in the US.

I’m not sure how many cities he’s going to visit, but the Austin, Dallas, as well as San Francisco dates are all sold out, so it looks like this French star is not going back to France any time soon. He’s told French Morning English Edition that he “wanted to get excited about a new project,” and “needed to live a little bit dangerously,” and it seems to be doing his well.

On a French-speaking video posted on his Facebook page today, the comedian looks very excited to be kicking off this tour, but not over-confident. “We’ll see,” he concludes, after confessing he’s never visited the Capital of Texas before: “I’ve never been there. Austin, for me, it was a car!” Gad Elmaleh’s already making us smile. If you want to catch him, North Door’s show is sold out, but the comedian will also play on Fun Fun Fun Fest‘s Jash Yellow stage at 3pm.